Discussion Topic

Raised in So Cal, I didn't make it to Bezerkeley until 2011. The moment I hit the place it was love at first sight. When I walked thru Peoples Park it was a fantastic, glorious experience. I kept pointing at all the wonderment and my friend kept yelling at me to quit pointing.

Spring in the B. Place is also Fantastic. The Gardens are Glorious!!!

Best Ever is Walking the Claremont Trail and at the top viewing All of the Bridges....Wow and Yow!!! L.

^^^The world according to the Word from Above, the almost-almighty US Census.^^^
"This would seem to be skewed because of the presence of students, but another Bay Citizen article states that the Census Bureau did not count adults living in groups in calculating the Gini Index just to avoid distortions."

Not knowing Berkeley enough, I am hesitant to suggest that perhaps maybe the folks the Census "interviewed" lied through their Dr. Bronner-cleaned teeth and sought purposely to mislead the Feds, which the Census-takers, being largely resentful low-lifes, temporarily conscripted to feed the Fascist Regime information which could serve to enslave the common man, and having no real good reason to do the job other than to feed themselves, and who therefore had no culpability, since they were trying to do the right thing by their conscience and to impress their friends but at the same time saw a chance to stick it to the Man, if only a pinprick, went along with the distorted counts given them by the various commune members (Four yesterdy, ten today, maybe thirty or forty a week, sometimes less...) and reported ridiculous fantasy figures given them by the residents of many and many a pad in the Berkeley and North Oakland vicinity, thus ensuring the perpetuation of the myth of Berkeley being the seat of mystery and possibility in the Golden State.

Both screening rooms were long and very, very narrow — no more than six seats across on either side of the center aisle, if I recall correctly—and the walls dividing them were paper thin, ensuring that the soundtrack from next door’s movie was always intruding into your movie’s quietest and most contemplative moments. Closed during the 1990s,

LaVals
Grossburger

This was a small drug/variety store where I used to buy my European mailer envelopes. I wonder where all that correspondence is now.

Berkeley is my home town...Moved there to live with my dad, end of 6th grade, a culture shock from a suburban Sacramento grammer school to M.L.K Junior high, in 1974. You could take Swahili or Russian as an elective in freakin 7th grade! My father had a house on Grizzly Peak Blvd, between Forest Lane and Latham Lane, meaning just a few blocks above Pinnacle Rock. First weekend there, I wandered down and encountered the Sierra Clubbers Sunday climbing sessions. I had climbed twice already and jumped right in...learned the ropes, then started hanging at Indian Rock with Fred C. Mike and Amy, Scuffy B, Scott and Nat...I had this crazy paper route for the Oakland Tribune, all around the hills, down into Kensignton, then I would ride down to Indian, boulder till dark, and ride back up to home...I would be challenged to crank my bike up that hill today! Every summer up here at Donner Summit, after 40 days straight of guiding kids out in the high sierra sun...I have a deep craving to wake up on a Berkeley morning, with thick fog, and the smell of Eucalyptus trees, a double cap from the French Hotel...and perusing Black Oak bookstore...

I thought Jerry's Grossburger was pretty good until I discovered Giant Bongo Burgers on Dwight just east of Telegraph. They not only had an excellent Shish Kebab Burger for the then princely sum of $1.00, but the anti-Shah ambiance was pure Berkeley.

Today, outsiders may call Berkeley "the People's Republic." During its early-20th-century heyday, however, the city was run primarily by Republicans. But Berkeleyans — even then — were not immune to the call of the Socialists for a more equitable divvying of life's spoils.

In 1911, when Socialist J. Stitt Wilson ran for mayor, even a paper not known for its radical opinions supported his cause. "His well-rounded sentences, polished rhetoric and telling logic drove home the truth with great power," the Gazette said of his kickoff speech.

Wilson, then a boyish 43, called for public ownership of lighting and electricity, streetcars, water, and phones, and a public kindergarten, with all these services provided at minimal cost. The battle, he said, set private citizens against "a mere handful of individuals who control the resources of the nation." Wilson, a backer of women's suffrage, already had the support of Berkeley's progressive women.